SF singer/songerwriter receives raves from Rolling Stone and pens song for Cam Archer-directed film

Armed with little more than an acoustic guitar and her fragile alto, San Francisco folk singer/songwriter Emily Jane White offers complex tales of melancholy and isolation. While comparisons to contemporaries like Cat Power and Hope Sandoval are frequent, Emily’s music owes a clear debt to classic female jazz and blues singers such a Billie Holiday. The lead track “Bessie Smith” from her debut Dark Undercoat (out November 6th) is actually an homage to the influential legend.

Emily stands out among her labelmates on Double Negative. Home to great wiry Bay Area post-punk bands such as The Fucking Ocean and Tempo No Tempo, Emily’s haunted blues quickly found a home based on just hearing her demo without the label even meeting her or seeing her play first. Fooling around with music since pre-school, Emily started on piano around the same time she learned to read, eventually picking up the guitar during her college days at UC Santa Cruz. While doing stints in an array of college punk and metal bands, she began writing her own songs and fronted her own group, the Diamond Star Halos.

After graduation Emily picked up and moved to Bordeaux, where she performed with a bevy of independent French artists further honing her songwriting skills. Upon returning stateside, she moved to SF and began recording 4-track demos formulating the songs that would ultimately become her debut album, Dark Undercoat.

For a brand-new artist without any other releases out, there is already a great deal of anticipation for Emily’s debut. Her song “Wild Tigers I Have Known” recently appeared on the soundtrack for the Cam Archer film of the same title and Rolling Stone recently placed Emily in their top 5 Hot List in which they describe the aforementioned song as “melancholy as a rainbow glimpsed through the bars of a prison window”.

Dark Overcoat
1. Bessie Smith
2. Hole In The Middle
3. Dark Undercoat
4. Dagger
5. Time On Your Side
6. The Demon
7. Sleeping Dead
8. Blue
9. Wild Tigers I Have Known
10. Two Shots To The Head
11. A Rose For Emily

Author: James McQuiston

Ph.D. in Political Science, Kent State University.
I have been the editor at NeuFutur / neufutur.com since I was 15. Looking for new staff members all the time; email me if you are interested. Thanks!
View all posts by James McQuiston